


upon all the living

by ace_verity



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Getting Back Together, Literary References & Allusions, Post-Season/Series 03, Romance, Snow, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22940290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ace_verity/pseuds/ace_verity
Summary: A new beginning, Matt thinks, is exactly what they deserve.---Matt walks Karen home in the middle of a snowstorm.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock/Karen Page
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	upon all the living

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I don't own these characters and make no profit. Title and ending quote from James Joyce's "The Dead."  
> Hope you enjoy!

By noon, it had begun: the snowstorm forecasters had been predicting all week had started to drop its first flakes on Hell’s Kitchen. Matt could tell as soon as he had woken up that morning that snow was imminent; there was always a certain metallic tang in the air before a winter storm, and today was no exception. He’d resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn’t be able to go out later that night and headed to the office, cold seeping into his bones.

Matt senses Karen turning to look out the window right before she remarks, “It’s really coming down out there.” She doesn’t sound unhappy about it, but rather seems pleased.

Foggy turns too. “You’re right. Wow. I can’t remember the last time it snowed like this.” He groans suddenly. “God, traffic’s gonna be a nightmare later.”

“An inch of snow and the whole city shuts down. You New Yorkers are so dramatic,” Karen teases. “When I was a kid, we could get a foot of snow overnight and still have school the next day.”

“I know, I know, all us mere mortals are wusses compared to the great Karen Page,” Foggy shoots back, good-humoredly. 

Matt clears his throat. “You can head out early if you want, Fog. Karen and I can hold down the fort for the afternoon.”

“You sure?” Foggy shrugs. “Alright, sounds good. Don’t stay too late, though. You might get snowed in, and then who’d be the poor sap digging you out of a snowbank tomorrow? Me, that’s who, and you know a city slicker like me is no good with a snow shovel.” He directs that last remark at Karen. Then to Matt he asks, “Are you going out tonight?”

“I don’t think so,” Matt answers. “Snow messes with my hearing, so I’ll probably stay in.”

“Gotcha.” Foggy nods, and even though he’s trying to hide it, Matt can still detect a hint of relief in his tone. A year ago, it might have rankled, but Matt had spent enough time isolated from his friends that he’s well past the point of getting annoyed by Foggy’s concern; now, it’s almost comforting.

Matt doesn’t say any of this, of course; instead, he simply requests, “Text when you get home safe?”

“Sure thing,” Foggy says easily; from the sound of rustling wool and crackling static, he’s just donned the stocking-hat he’s had for as long as Matt’s known him. Matt doesn’t know for sure, but judging by the way Karen stifles a giggle every time Foggy wears it, he thinks it’s probably fairly hideous. 

“Don’t mock the hat, Page,” Foggy says now, which seems to confirm Matt’s suspicions. “You kids behave, alright?” As he passes Matt, Foggy elbows him in the ribs, which, _ow_ , and also very unsubtle. 

“Bye, Foggy.” Karen’s still smiling as she says it, but Matt can’t detect any indication that she’d seen, which is a relief. 

The door shuts behind him, and Matt returns to his desk, but he can’t concentrate. Things have been quiet since Fisk’s takedown, and the three of them have settled into a new routine. Matt’s happier than he’s been in years — since Columbia, probably — and he can’t bear the thought of ruining that. 

But he wonders, sometimes, about Karen. Before Castle and Electra and the Hand, what they’d had together was — not perfect, by any stretch; there was too much deceit between them, and no relationship could survive under those conditions. Now, though — well, things are different, and Matt thinks maybe, _maybe…_

And try as he might, Matt can’t tell from Karen’s heartbeat whether she feels the same way. It doesn’t speed up like it had when they started dating; it’s steady now when she looks at him, but not quite the same as when she looks at anyone else. 

The difference is enough to give Matt a bit of hope, but not enough to convince him entirely, and so he hasn’t pushed the issue (despite Foggy’s less-than-stealthy efforts to change his mind). 

_Enough_ , Matt tells himself, feeling foolish, and determinedly turns his attention back to his work. 

Before long, the sounds of the city have become muffled by a coating of snow — no more than three inches so far, Matt estimates, but showing no signs of letting up. They’ve been working in near silence since Foggy left around two, but now Karen’s listening to a weather report on her laptop; Matt can hear the weatherman predicting steady snowfall throughout the rest of the evening, disrupting traffic and accumulating up to six inches. 

“Think we should call it a day before the sidewalks get too bad?” Matt asks, breaking the quiet of the office.

Karen pauses the weather report and turns in her chair to look out the window. “Yeah, I think so. Heaven forbid Foggy have to dig us out tomorrow.” She tidies her desk, then reaches under her desk and pulls out — boots?

Sure enough, Karen takes off her heels and slips on the boots. “I came prepared,” she tells Matt by way of explanation, and he nods. The clomp of her footfalls on the floorboards as she packs up contrasts sharply with the usual refined tapping of her heels, and the incongruity of it makes Matt bite back a smile. 

He dons his own overcoat and holds hers up for her; she slides her arms in, and Matt smoothes his hands over her shoulders, the wool of her coat rasping against his fingertips, before stepping away. 

“Ready?” he asks, trying not to give too much thought to the fact that Karen’s heartbeat had ticked up just a notch and his had done the same. 

“Ready,” she confirms, and she takes his arm when he offers it. 

When they step onto the sidewalk together, the cold steals Matt’s breath away, and he takes a moment to orient himself. The temperature is low enough that the snow is accumulating on the sidewalks, muffling the sounds of the city. It’s eerily quiet: few people are driving in this weather, apart from the occasional cab or lone bus making their way through slushy streets, and even fewer are braving the snow on foot. 

Karen had paused with him, tipping her head back to watch the snow falling fast. Her breath crystallizes in the air with an infinitesimal crackling sound, and Matt can sense pinpoints of chill speckling her face and fading — snowflakes landing and melting on her skin. 

Karen makes a happy humming sound and says thoughtfully, almost to herself, “Snow was general all over Hell’s Kitchen.”

It’s an odd non-sequitur, and yet it’s familiar. It takes Matt a minute to place it, and they’ve started walking again when it finally comes to him.

“Is that Joyce?”

“‘The Dead,’” Karen confirms, seeming pleased that he’s recognized the quote. She nudges her shoulder against his companionably. “Someone was paying attention in lit class.”

“Freshman year Research and Comp,” Matt clarifies. “My professor gave the curriculum an Irish literature theme. We had to read _Portrait of the Artist_ , too.” He grimaces. “I hated it, actually. But _Dubliners_ was good.”

Karen nods, her hair swinging with the motion. “I did a paper on ‘The Dead’ for AP Lit in high school. I never really liked writing literary analysis, but.” She shrugs. “I guess that paper was an exception.”

They walk in silence for a few minutes, and Matt casts his mind back to that comp class so many years ago. He doesn’t remember the plot of “The Dead” very well — something about a man, maybe named George or Gregory, going to a dinner party. Joyce, he remembers, focused more on character and subtext than actual plot. But Matt recalls the last paragraph pretty well — snow falling on the cities and cemeteries like the coming of death. That had stuck with him. His professor had said that the snow was a symbol, but a symbol of what, Matt doesn’t remember. 

“Do you like the snow, Karen?” he asks suddenly, almost surprising even himself. He hears her hum thoughtfully, tipping her head back again to look up at the sky. 

“I do, actually,” she says pensively. “When it’s fresh, it makes everything look — clean. New, I guess. When I was a kid, I used to think it looked like icing on a cake, and when it would stick to the tree branches, it was like lace.” Karen pauses, then adds, “It’s different in the city, but pretty in its own way. Looking out the window of the office, I feel like I’m inside a snowglobe.” She shakes her head like she’s embarrassed and says, “It’s silly, I know.”

“No, it’s sweet. It sounds lovely,” Matt tells her, and she ducks her head. He thinks she must be smiling. 

“What’s it like for you?” Karen’s face is turned toward him now, and he feels her gaze on him before she returns her attention to the sidewalk in front of them. 

Matt hums thoughtfully, taking a moment to compose his response. It’s still somewhat new to Karen, knowing about his senses, and he thinks she’s even more curious about the matter than Foggy had been. She doesn’t usually ask outright, though, probably from a sense of propriety and an unwillingness to offend him. Maybe because it’s just the two of them in this quiet winter world, she’s found the courage to ask.

She’s wrong, though; he’s never offended by it. If anything, it gives him the tiniest bit of pleasure to know of her curiosity, enough that he has to remind himself sternly that pride is a sin.

“Hearing is harder,” he finally says. “When the snow builds up, it muffles everything, and sound travels differently. And I can’t detect slippery spots very well, so I rely more on my cane — and other people — during the winter. That makes it hard to go out at night. And scent, too — the snow blankets everything, covers it up with its own scent, sort of crisp and sharp. But not unpleasant."

Karen nods, taking it in. They’re about a block away from her apartment, and they cross the street before she speaks again. “And right now? What do you… see?”

He focuses, then says, “There’s a raccoon in the alley, sleeping behind a dumpster. It found a vent, so it’s keeping warm. The road was plowed and salted not long ago. This morning, the air smelled metallic, and that’s how I knew it would snow. Each snowflake is like — like a cold pinprick, drifting down. I can hear them when they hit the ground, just the slightest noise, but all together… it’s almost like static, but musical.”

“Musical static,” Karen echoes, her grip on his arm tightening. They’re outside her door, now, but neither of them makes a move to leave; they stand side-by-side for a moment, and Matt thinks she’s listening for the snowfall. He wonders what she hears. 

Karen drops her head onto his shoulder and exhales, her breath crackling in the cold. Matt’s hyper-aware of her in that moment: he can hear each snowflake that comes to rest on her skin; they linger on her hair, forming a halo, and freckle ice onto her face. He detects the flush in her cheeks and on the tip of her nose, spots of warmth that glow brightly in the chill. 

Karen notices his focus and straightens up, shifting her hand to rest lightly behind his elbow as she draws away and angles herself to face him. Her breath catches in her chest, anticipation crackling like static between them, and she waits for — something. Matt’s waiting too. 

A snowflake lands softly against the corner of her mouth, and without thinking, Matt brushes it away. Even that barest brush of his thumb against her skin seems electric, and they both hold their breath. The whole city holds its breath, it seems, and even the wind has stopped, enveloping them in stillness. 

“Karen,” he says, and her gloved hand leaves his arm and comes to rest against the nape of his neck. He doesn’t have to say anything more. 

Her lips are soft and taste of peppermint and rosemary — from the lip balm she uses, Matt realizes. Her eyelashes are lacy with caught snowflakes, and she smiles against his mouth before she pulls away, resting her forehead against his.

“Matt,” she whispers back, then kisses him again, slow and sweet and full of promise under the falling snow.

The oneness of humanity, he remembers later; that was what the snow had symbolized in the story. Matt recalls his professor’s words: _The story is fundamentally hopeful. Even as it ends, the protagonist Gabriel experiences an epiphany. A fresh start, and a new beginning._

A new beginning, Matt thinks, is exactly what they deserve. 

_"Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard... It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."_

**Author's Note:**

> This... pretty much came out of nowhere. I originally planned to write a fluff piece about Matt, Foggy, and Karen calling a snow day and doing fun winter things, incorporating a throwaway reference to "The Dead" by James Joyce because it's a really great story (and thematically relevant to Daredevil, at least a little bit). Then somehow along the way, that idea morphed into two separate stories, and this fic is the first of those. The second will be a gen winter fluff piece set in the same universe as my fic [summer days, drifting away](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22478257), which I'm hoping to finish and post within the next couple weeks.
> 
> I ended up incorporating more discussion of "The Dead" than I had originally planned. If you've never read it, I recommend it highly; it's a 15k word short story by James Joyce that's said to be one of the greatest short stories ever written. This fic borrows some elements of my own experience - like Karen, I wrote a literary analysis essay on "The Dead," for a class similar to the one that Matt describes, and it's one of the papers I most enjoyed writing in my academic career so far. The running theme of "The Dead" is the protagonist's struggle to overcome his own isolation, which sounds familiar... Looking at you, Matt Murdock.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear what you think, especially since since I normally don't write romance. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
